


We keep living anyway

by historymiss



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Civil War speculation, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 12:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5375996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No-one ever gave Bucky a choice. Civil War-y speculation on Bucky and his Feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We keep living anyway

It isn’t until the third safehouse that Bucky can catch Steve on his own. They’ve been running for days, now, Sam’s exhausted from ducking at shadows and Sharon’s gone for what she’s ominously called ‘a walk’. God, Sharon. All the ways she is and isn’t like Peggy, he doesn’t know how Steve can stand it, or maybe he’s gotten used to looking at a world that’s overlaid with the ghosts of his own.

It doesn’t matter. Steve’s polishing his shield in slow, careful, circular strokes, and Bucky watches him until he can’t bear to be silent any more.

“Why’d you do it?”

“There’s a scratch right here.” Steve says. “I’m buffing it out.”

Bucky sits. Lets the silence stretch until Steve looks up.

“I did it because what Tony’s doing is unfair.”

“He-” Bucky looks down at his hands, and he has the sudden urge to take a knife and peel away the silver plate by plate. Maybe his own arm will be there, underneath. “He has a point.”

“About you?” The anger is carefully controlled (as it has been all Steve’s life, Bucky never figured why people thought of Steve as scrappy when he controlled his explosions, perfectly timed to damage only what he wanted). “Buck, that’s the biggest pile of bullshit-”

“How do you know?” Bucky can’t get angry. He has this blank space inside where anger might once have been. All that remains is weariness. “Steve, everything they say about me is true. I did kill all those people. I attacked Nick Fury, I tried to kill Sam- I shot you-”

His voice breaks, then, because what he wants to say is, I remember names and newspapers and mountains and electric lights pointing to the future, I remember things but I don’t feel them, not any more, and once he’s said that he can’t take it back.

“You were made to do it.” Steve says forcefully, laying the shield aside. He does that thing, then, the heroic jaw thing that used to look (if Bucky was honest) kinda dumb until serum made him grow into it. He looks like a hero from a film reel, like the plaster and marble saints in a church. “You didn’t have a choice, Bucky, we’ve been over this.”

Bucky spreads his hands, helpless. He can’t say it. It’s too big. Too weighty.

“You had a choice, too.” Is that the right thing to say? God, what he wouldn’t give for the right words to bubble up, some kind of muscle memory to guide him. “You stood there and you told them all to go to hell, and you didn’t even look at me- God, Steve, you think I like watching you fight your friends? Like it proves something to me?”  
“I’m not trying to prove anything.” Steve leans forward, and his hand almost reaches out- Bucky registers the flinch- but he doesn’t, and the space between them remains. He sighs, an angry blast of breath. “Buck, do you want to die?”

“I- what?”

“Do. You want. To die.”

“No?” Bucky frowns. “I didn’t think Stark would-”

“Tony wants everyone to get along, and he doesn’t know you, and he trusts people he shouldn’t.” Steve flexes his fingers, makes a fist and then unclenches consciously. “He would try real hard not to let anything happen to you, but you’d end up dead or worse somewhere along the line. HYDRA was SHIELD for so long, Buck. I’m not handing you back to what remains of it be punished for things you didn’t do.”

“What if I-”

“Don’t say it.” Steve does touch him now, impulsive, hand on the knee, and it’s like a current completing, like the past and present and future collapsing. “I know what you want, and unfortunately, I’m sorry Bucky, it’s really fucking dumb. So I’m gonna ask you again. Do you want to die?”

And Bucky finds, somewhere, entirely to his surprise, he doesn’t.

“Right.” Steve knows what the silence means. “So we’ll take it from there.”


End file.
